A Star Is Born

First Hit: First part of the film is engaging, however towards the end it less fetching and with a 135 minute running time, needed to be trimmed.

This felt like two separate films. The first part is engaging, and buying into the characters is easy. We are introduced to Jack (Bradley Cooper), a boozing leader of a popular band, in concert delivering raspy singing and playing wild guitar in-front of a huge adoring crowd.

Driving away from the concert he wants another drink and finds a bar. In the bar, he watches Ally (Lady Gaga) sing a fantastic rendition of La Vie En Rose. Jack is enthralled and heads backstage and after conversation they head to another bar to talk.

Jack discovers that Ally also writes songs, good ones. They begin a romantic relationship, and he invites her to sing one of her songs with him in front of an audience of thousands. Her insecurities, which are explored when she and Jack are hanging out in a bar, stem from what she says is her too-large of a nose. This reason for her insecurity wasn’t believable to me. A quick review of others who played this role, Barbara Streisand, has a far more unique nose. This wasn’t the best thing to select for Ally’s anxiousness. However, this is where the audience is hooked, and also where the movie begins to meander.

As the film journeys onward, we’ve bought into their love because their chemistry is excellent and Lady Gaga as an actress is fully believable. Cooper, we know, can act his pants off, and for the most part he’s good here, but I couldn’t help but sense there was some struggle with him directing himself.

The last half of the film is where this film begins its decline. For me, Jack never really seems to, or appears to, clean up from his drinking and drug use, although he supposedly does. When he finally cleans up, Ally’s music and business manager Rez Gavron (Rafl Gavron) tells Jack, that he’ll be the reason for Ally’s downfall if he continues to associate musically with his wife Ally.

At this point it becomes obvious what’s going to happen, as the clues are poignantly spread out during the course of the film.

Cooper as an actor was excellent more towards the beginning of the film, but it seemed to fall off towards the end. I have no idea of the sequence in which the film was shot but there is a noticeable difference between the beginning and end of this movie. As a director and producer, there seemed too many scenes and prudent trimming would have helped to overall presentation. As an aside, he did a great job of playing a musician on stage. Gaga was extraordinary. She is a natural on the screen and this part was perfect for her to introduce acting into her repertoire. Gavron was strong as Ally’s career guiding manager. Sam Elliot (as Bobby, Jack’s older brother) was wonderful as the older brother who did his best to raise Jack. Andrew Dice Clay (as Andrew, Ally’s father) was sublime. I’m happy to see him in this role without the “Diceman” attitude. Anthony Ramos, as Roman, was wonderful as Ally’s best friend. Eric Roth and Bradley Cooper wrote a good script, although it needed to be trimmed. Cooper, as previously stated, directed this film.

Overall: The singing was terrific, and it showcases the talent of Lady Gaga

Blue Jasmine

First Hit:  Wasn’t impressed with overall script but thought Cate Blanchett was amazing to watch.

For some reason the film doesn't delve too much into the cause of everyone's anguish; the defining event being the arrest and prosecution of Hal (Alec Baldwin) for deceiving all his family and friends with investment schemes that ruin their lives.

Therefore, I found it hard to "get" that Hal actually had the smarts to be deceitful. Despite this obvious slight of hand, the prominent focus of this film is the subject of lying and self deceit. His wife, Jasmine (Blanchett), is the cause of his fall from grace because she deceived herself by ignoring until she decided to call him out.

As Blanchett as the vehicle of the story, director and writer Woody Allen hopes you forgive the lack of background and gives you snippets of the past by having Jasmine zone out into an alternate reality to fill in the story. In much of the film, it works well enough, but in other aspects it doesn’t. Jasmine blames Hal for her current life of no money and no friends, while taking no responsibility for any of it herself.

Arriving at her sister Ginger’s (Sally Hawkins) in the semi-downtrodden neighborhood on South Van Ness in San Francisco, she is lost and wants to try to make something out of her life. The story is that she spent time in a mental hospital after being found talking to herself on the streets of New York City. The first lie she tells her sister is that she flew to SF in first class; the scene showing her in her seat we can easily see she wasn’t in the first class section at all. She cannot let go of the life she use to have.

Throughout the film we watch Jasmine fade in and out of past stories and her current reality. In the end we don't really know the truth of whether she was complicit in her husbands story or just didn't want to accept the truth as her reality.

For the most part Blanchett was very good and I also felt she was limited by the script. Baldwin wasn’t very believable as the master manipulator. Hopkins was superb. She was refreshing, alive and well suited to the role. Andrew Dice Clay, as Ginger’s former husband Augie, especially in his first scene, seemed like he was reading script and didn’t embody the character very well. Bobby Cannavale as Chili was very engaged in his character and was fun to watch. Allen wrote and directed this effort. The background was week and made believability of the story weak. He got some strong performances out of Cannavale, Blanchett and Hawkins.

Overall:  Not Allen’s best but not his worst either.